The State of Wisconsin exempts religious organizations from their unemployment tax system. Even though everyone agrees that Catholic Charities is controlled by a church, Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Catholic Charities is not “operated primarily for religious purposes”, and therefore does not qualify for the exemption. Catholic Charities appealed to the Supreme Court to ask if that decision violated the First Amendment.
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471 - Beginning of the End for the Johnson Amendment
How many of you know about the Johnson Amendment? If you’ve ever donated to a church or other charity, you’ve been impacted by this amendment. This limitation on freedom of speech has been in effect for over 70 years. And now, the House of Representatives is trying to remedy this infringement.
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470 - Automatic License Plate Readers
There will always be tension between our desire for privacy and safety. We're all for privacy, until we find that an invasion of said privacy could have stopped some terrible event. But are we willing to trade our privacy for safety? “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” --Benjamin Franklin In the case of SCHOLL and BEDNARZ v. Illinois State Police the privacy question revolves around automatic license place readers (ALPRs) and what makes a search reasonable.
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469 - The Latest SCOTUS Gun Rights Infringement
I don’t know which of the three branches of government does the most to infringe on your rights. Take, for example, the recent Supreme Court decision in the case Bondi v. Vanderstok, where Mr. Vanderstok challenged the recent regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives redefining weapons parts kits as firearms. It seems the Supreme Court has a hard time reading either the law or the Constitution.
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468 - Whose Safety Matters More
Imagine you are stopped by law enforcement. Maybe you were doing something wrong, maybe not. At this point, when you are in the custody of law enforcement, whose safety matters more, yours or the officers? In the 2017 Fourth Circuit case United States v. Robinson, while not specifically put this way, the question came up, does officer safety trump your right against unreasonable search and seizure, even your own safety?
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